The 512mb or 1GB GPU Debate

[kizza1645]

Hey guys, i recently just made some huge upgrades to ones of my systems,

and was wandering is there really any performance difference in a 512mb or a 1gb gpu? << to play crysis, and high end games such as...

Because i opted out for the 1GB card, because i thought,
'well if your going to do something you may as well over do it'

But is there really any difference in performance,
i know there is in sandbox modes, because more models can be processed etc.

But for normal games like crysis, can you really make use of such a large amount of vram?



System Specs,
Q6600 Quad Core, 2.40GHZ
4GB performance ram
1GB Palit 9600gt GPU
32-bit windows vista

[ThrowingShapes]

There will be a difference in the game that are higher tiered graphics, i.e. Crysis.  There are also alot of games like GTA4 that were sloppy ports, and these will eat up your ram like candy too. 

Most games require 512mb of vram now, so I would say 1gb was a good purchase, a little future proofing if you will.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

The memory in the GPU is the memory that is being processed by the graphics card.
More VRAM, the more it can hold in its volatile memory, the faster it can process data.

[kizza1645]

In English?

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I'm not going to get into too much detail.

The VRAM is exactly like the computers RAM. It's volatile memory. In other words, the data stored in this memory can be accessed and manipulated much faster than if it were on the hard disk (Not to say it's been moved off the hard disk).
If the power is cut, the RAM or VRAM will be emptied.

To take advantage of this, because the graphics card needs to process all the 3D meshes, textures, graphics, ect, there must be somewhere to store all this data.
More VRAM, the more data the GPU can hold.
Because it has this extra space, any additional textures or meshes ect that may be used will also be loaded into the VRAM so the computer doesn't have to find it on the hard disk.

How's that for English?

[Calum]

More video RAM helps in some games, but not in others.
Generally, it won't help overall performance, but it can affect the minimum frame rate (which isn't shown in a lot of reviews, but it very important to your game experience) and it can reduce stuttering a lot.
An example I always bring out is my system in Crysis - it can handle the game on all high settings, but every few minutes I get a pause as the VRAM fills up and it loads new items into the VRAM.  Only lasts a second or two, but it can really ruin the game.  Reducing one setting by one notch eliminates this entirely, as 512MB is enough for thoose settings.

[Accessless]

The memory in the GPU is the memory that is being processed by the graphics card.
More VRAM, the more it can hold in its volatile memory, the faster it can process data.

Don't forget to mention the proccessing speed of the card. As was a problem with early 1Gb VRAM cards, they had the memory but not the proccessing power to back it up. There's no point buying a graphics card that sacrifices speed for memory. Not to say that all 1Gb cards are like that!

Just check the proccessing speeds of the gigs to the 512's. Or ask someone here.

[BC_Programmer]

the speed of the memory itself is important.

a Graphics card GPU stores textures into the VRAM. the processing speed of the GPU itself is only of consequence for selecting RAM amounts because applications/games that would use that much video memory wouldn't support a slower card to begin with.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Ah yes, speed matters!

Why buy a car if it can't go fast?

[BC_Programmer]

Ah yes, speed matters!

Why buy a car if it can't go fast?

because it's a moving truck. 

[kizza1645]

Well here is the specs of the one that i bought,
can you tell me if its all nice and speedy?

Bus interface: PCI Express 2.0 Support
Memory: 1024MB
Memory Interface: 256 bit DDR2
Core clock: 650 Mhz
Memory Clock: 800 Mhz (400 x2)

[ThrowingShapes]

Clock speeds seem ok, or on par with 512mb models, but the gddr2 thing is kind of interesting.  I had no idea those existed, I assumed they were all gddr3 

EDIT: I searched newegg and couldn't even find a gddr2 version made by palit, only one I could find was made by some generic "sparkle" brand?

[kizza1645]

http://www.mwave.com.au/newAU/mwaveAU/productdetail.asp?CartID=mAU@3FJW2UHEEDG616R9ZBEF9QBVLIBOICLSGG7XHV4F2E47OH&sku=42022191

see for yourself